


I've Walked That Road Before

by GigglesAndFreckles



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bisexuality, F/F, F/M, M/M, Parallel Universes, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Some Swearing, Tarsus IV, spirk appearing by the end, spock/uhura at the start
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-17 22:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5888455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GigglesAndFreckles/pseuds/GigglesAndFreckles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course the crew of the Enterprise knew parallel universes existed, but it had never really seemed tangible for most of them until an unapologetic and angry girl with familiar eyes ended up on their ship.</p><p>And Bones thought one Jim Kirk was hard to wrangle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Walked That Road Before

**Author's Note:**

> Notes at the end.

Leonard McCoy had to deal with a lot on the Enterprise. Ensigns that couldn’t keep themselves out of harm’s way for anything, unheard of diseases and infections constantly finding their way into his patients from who knows where, snarky first officers, and a captain with no regard for his own safety. Most days it was difficult to just make it to the end of shift without something significant going wrong. 

Leonard McCoy dealt with a lot, but he always prided himself on knowing what to do with what he was given. 

This, however, was completely unprecedented. 

The cold bite of a phaser pressed against his neck make Mccoy stop in his tracks, hands starting to raise almost by reflex. 

“Let’s not do anything rash,” He said slowly. Part of him was waiting for Kirk to start giggling in that annoying way he had, to gasp out through his amusement that he was back from the away mission early and if only he could see the look on his face and on and on, until he finally calmed down and apologized. 

Instead, a harsh voice, one decidedly more high pitched than Kirk’s, hissed, “Who are you and where am I?”

“Look, why don’t you just put down the phaser and we’ll talk-”

The cool metal didn’t let up, and the girl -or at least at this point Bones had assumed his attacker was female, he didn’t actually have any proof- just got angrier. “If you move even a little bit wrong, I am taking this off stun! Who are you?”

“My name is Leonard McCoy, and I’m the CMO on the Enterprise.” Bones answered, slowly.

“Where am I?” The voice asked again, more insistent. The phaser pressed harder against his neck. 

Bones sighed. “The starship Enterprise.” 

There was a pause. The voice, so confident and angry before, suddenly dropped to something much more hesitant, almost childlike. “A starship? How did I get on a starship? Why am I here?” 

With his hands still raised Bones slowly turned to face his attacker. 

It was a teenage girl, nothing inherently intimidating about her at all. She was average height and a bit too thin with a tan and freckles that suggested she spent plenty of time in the sun, a flannel shirt tied around her thin hips. There was something about her that seemed achingly familiar, a sense of deja vu that Bones just couldn’t place. 

Blue eyes, almost too blue to be real, focused on Bones’ face, searching it for something. Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it. Her phaser, still in hand and aimed for the doctor’s neck, slowly lowered to her side. 

Something akin to helplessness worked its way across her face. “Why am I here?”

“I don’t know,” Bones said honestly. “What do you remember?”

The girl sighed and looked to the ceiling. “I was at home, outside, and I saw something a couple hundred feet in the distance. A ripple in the air or something. I almost just ignored it, but there was something about it, you know? So I went over and touched it.”

“You touched it.” Bones’ voice dropped into a tone normally reserved for Kirk when he did something particularly stupid. 

“I mean I didn’t lick it or anything, but yeah I touched it.” She flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. “Anyway, I just blinked and when I opened my eyes I was in your transporter room. You, uh, you might want to check on the guy that was in there. And maybe keep more than one in there in the future.”

Well, at least that explained where she’d gotten the phaser from. One more mystery down. 

“Well, you should probably come down to medical bay with me, I can check you over, make sure your insides aren’t melting or anything,” Bones offered. He was awarded with a bright smile. “Can I get your name?”

“Jane,” She answered brightly, stepping to follow him.

“Just Jane?”

“Kirk,” She answered, a little more reluctantly. “Jane Tiberius Kirk.”

Bones froze. Maybe it was just a coincidence? 

And maybe Jim Kirk was going to appear right in front of him and yell ‘Gotcha!’

Until he could actually figure this out, Bones made a resolution not to freak out the girl for no reason. He couldn’t be sure of what was happening yet, after all. Facts first. Freak out later.

So he was going to gather facts. 

“Who’s your mom?”

Jane looked sideways at him, discomfort clear as day on her face. “Why?”

“I think I might know her.” It wasn’t a lie, not really. 

Jane sighed. “Who doesn’t know Winona, really? And yeah, that makes my dad George Kirk, I’m not gonna make you ask.”

“I could have assumed,” Bones said, doing his absolute best to mask the panicked confusion rolling around in his head. 

He just had to break it down into the facts, he had to make it make sense. This wasn’t a time to jump to conclusions. If he started doing that, he would worry the girl, and he needed the girl to come with him. DNA tests, that’s what he needed. Facts.

“Where you from? Iowa?” Bones asked. 

Jane’s smile was back, just a little bit, and a little too forced. “Yeah, Riverside.” She looked up at Bones. “You from the states?”

“Yeah,” Bones smiled, genuinely. “Georgia, actually.”

The strain in her smile faded just a little bit, just enough that Bones felt ok asking more questions. “How old are you, kid?” 

They passed a few crew members just minding their own business, on their way to the greenhouse most likely, and Bones did his best to block Jane from their view. She didn’t seem to notice.

“How old are you, old man? I’m foolin, I don’t care how old you are. I just turned 17.” A sort of amicable silence fell between them then, only broken by Jane humming the chorus of an old Abba song. 

Her eyes were just a bit wider and rounder than the captain’s, but they were unmistakably the same color, watching the world in the same intense way. Her hair was a little blonder, her skin more tanned, but in all fairness to the captain, he hadn’t been able to get outside much. The way she carried herself was all Kirk, confident and upright, a bounce in her step that honestly seemed much more at home in this teenage girl than it did in the grown man Bones knew. 

It wasn’t a terribly long walk from deck 6, where the transporter rooms were located, to the medical bay in deck 5, and it didn’t take them all too long to get there. The room was empty except for Christine Chapel finishing up a simple dermal regeneration on an ensign from engineering. With an exaggerated gesture, Bones motioned towards the biobed furthest away from his nurse and her patient. 

“M’lady,” Bones grumbled, earning a giggle from Jane. He did take the phaser away from her before running any tests, a safety precaution. 

Her vitals all appeared fine, whatever had brought her to them didn’t leave any lasting marks. She was about 10 pounds underweight for her height, and there were a few signs of healing blunt trauma, but otherwise everything was alright, and bruises and scraped wouldn’t be uncommon if his crazy hypothesis ended up coming true. It was hard to keep a Kirk from a fight. 

“Well,” Bones said. “Looks like you’re fine. Your organs aren’t exploding or anything, at least.”

Jane chuckled into her hand. “Well at least there’s that.” 

“I might need a blood test, just to make sure of a few more things.”

Immediately the smile slipped from her face. “Is that really necessary?”

He felt bad for the kid, he really did, but Bones needed to run a thorough DNA analysis. “I’m sorry, kiddo, but I think so.”

Jane grimaced, but held out her arm without another word. Bones smiled, trying to reassure her, but she didn’t look at him.

“You’re underweight, kid. They don’t feed you in Iowa?” Bones asked, just trying to distract her. 

It was the wrong thing to say. 

Her returning smile was all tight lips and discomfort. “I don’t talk about that anymore. Thanks for your concern, though.”

Bones decided it would be best to not ask after that. Questions like that would have to be reserved for later. He just nodded and turned on his heel to run the blood sample.

Nurse Chapel was immediately on his heels. The door had barely closed behind them when she started asking questions. 

“Who is that? Doctor, what’s going on?” 

Bones sighed, placing the blood sample where it needed to be for analysis. He pushed the necessary buttons before turning back to Christine. “I don’t know. I’m hoping this will answer a few questions. She’s 17, and the last she knew she was in Iowa.”

“Well,” Chapel crossed her arms. “We’re awful far away from Iowa, Doctor.”

“We really are.”

The results were on the screen, flashing the name Bones was so desperately hoping not to see. The closest match the ship could find, identical but for one specific, yet admittedly prominent, trait. Confused, but as certain as she could be, the Enterprise was displaying the name of her captain. 

James Tiberius Kirk, according to the Enterprise, was sitting on a bed in medbay, kicking his feet and not knowing what to focus on, too blue eyes flitting around the entire room. He was in the blood, the DNA, of the girl. She wasn’t a sister, or a daughter. 

She was Kirk. 

The hard evidence was staring him in the face, combined with everything he had already seen and heard. His head fell into his hands. 

McCoy’s life had never been this impossible before the Enterprise happened. He almost wished he had it in him to miss it. 

To her credit, Christine seemed to be handling the news very well. She looked shocked, and more than a little bit confused, but she seemed to understand that Bones didn’t have anything even resembling answers, and didn’t ask. 

“We may be even farther from her Iowa,” Christine mused. 

Bones turned back to his most trusted nurse. “I need you to keep her company for a minute while I download all this onto a PADD. I don’t want her to do anything. Or touch anything.”

An amused smile tugged on Chapel’s lips. “You said she’s 17, not 5.” At the look Bones gave her, she rolled her eyes. “Yes, Doctor McCoy.” 

Jane perked up when the door opened again, smiling when Chapel walked through. “And who might you be?” 

Christine smiled back, flipped her short blonde hair, and grabbed the PADD from the table. She began flipping through Jane’s recorded vitals before she responded. “Nurse Chapel, and you must be Jane.”

“Bingo,” Jane winked. “You got a first name?” 

“I suppose I do, yes.” 

Jane’s smile widened, and she pulled her hair out of it’s ponytail, shaking it loose and letting it fall across her chest. “You gonna make me guess?”

Chapel was about to respond when Bones walked back through. “Nurse Chapel, I’m sending for Lieutenant Uhura, if you would be so kind as to take this PADD to her and explain the situation.”

The nurse nodded, her amused grin not slipping an inch. She took the PADD from Bones, waved to Jane, and walked out. Jane’s eyes were glued to the nurse’s legs, watching them move and noting the contrast between the pale skin and the short blue skirt. When the doors closed behind Chapel, Jane turned to Bone so fast it’s a miracle she didn’t end up with whiplash. 

“She is gorgeous.”

There was such conviction in her eyes, almost bordering on anger, that Bones really had no idea what response she wanted from him. He settled with sighing and saying, “And you’re a minor. Don’t hit on my nurses.” 

Jane sighed and fell dramatically back onto the bed, her arm over her eyes and her hair fanning out across the thin sheets. After her melodramatic breathing was complete, she removed her arm with a wicked smirk. 

She slowly looked up to Bones, who had settled into a chair next to her. 

“You’re not bad either, actually. For an old guy, at least. The rugged, angry thing works for you.”

Bones closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t do this.” 

“Don’t do what?” Jane asked innocently, still laying down. “Do you want me to talk about your eyes, instead? I can talk about your eyes. Should I talk about your eyes?”

Her smirk only got more pronounced as McCoy looked more distraught. “You have a really nice jawline, you know that?”

He slowly released his breath through his nose. 

“And your hands are like, ridiculous. Like holy shit, are hands like that just par for the course for surgeons? Have I been looking into the wrong professional fields for hook ups? Because, like-”

“Please,” Bones said through his teeth. “Stop.”

Jane giggled, and she slowly sat up from the bed. “I’ll stop. Cause I’m a minor, and going further would be inappropriate.”

“All of this is so ludicrously inappropriate,” Bones grumbled.

Jane giggled again. Despite every messed up thing about the situation they were in, it was nice to hear her laugh. It reminded Bones of Kirk back at the Academy, without the weight of a starship on his shoulders. 

“Hey man,” Jane said. “If it counts for anything, I’m really sorry I held you at gunpoint earlier. No hard feelings?” 

It was so off hand, so casual, so Kirk, that all Bones could do was shake his head and smile. They fell back into the amicable silence they had found earlier, both of them feeling better. The air in the room was almost content. 

They sat like that for a few minutes. The quiet was a relief after everything. 

It had only been around a half an hour since Bones had a phaser digging into his neck, but it seemed like days. 

Eventually, Chapel returned with a flustered Uhura in tow. Jane’s eyes swept over the new visitor with an appreciation that Bones didn’t want to acknowledge. 

Uhura didn’t say anything, but she kept her eyes pointedly off of the Kirk on the bed. Her eyes could have burned holes through Bones’ skulls as he turned to Jane. “You gonna behave for Nurse Chapel?”

The sunny, too-innocent grin he got in place of answer told him everything he needed to know, but there was really no other choice. “Just try.”

Chapel settled into the chair Bones left vacant, striking up a conversation about one thing or another with Jane as Bones ushered Uhura to the small analysis lab that had confirmed his ridiculous suspicions. 

“Doctor, I don’t understand.”

Bones sighed. He’d been doing that a lot today, he noticed. “Neither do I, Lieutenant. But the test doesn’t lie. Except for the sex, the DNA is an exact match. The computer even pulled up Winona and George’s DNA from the database. They could be twins.”

Uhura leaned on the console of the machine, her arms tense and her joints locked. “What’s your theory?”

“Parallel dimension. Or cloning. Or she’s really Jim but magically deaged and genderbent, I don’t know.”

Uhura’s eyes closed. “Why did you call me down here?”

“Because I trust you. Because you’re smart and rational and I need that. And because you know Jim. You have to know that the girl in there can’t be anybody but another James Kirk,” Bones said. 

For a moment, Uhura let herself look through the window and watch her interact with the nurse. She was, without a doubt, relaying the news that Bones rules that she wasn’t allowed to flirt with Chapel, complete with overdramatic gestures. 

Uhura looked up, a determined look in her eyes. “What’s her name?”

“Jane.”

Uhura smiled and let out a small, humorless laugh, neither of which reached her eyes. “Her vitals are all good? She’s healthy?”

“Yeah,” Bones said, not sure where Uhura was going with this line of questioning. “However she got here, it didn’t hurt her.”

“So she’s not in any urgent condition. I think we should talk to Spock,” Uhura said, very matter-of-factly. “You should have called him down first.”

“Your boyfriend has a ship to captain until Jim gets back,” Bones reminded her. “I didn’t want to give him any more distractions.”

Maybe it also had something to do with Bones not wanting the distraction of wanting to strangle a Vulcan while trying to help a patient. But definitely mostly that Spock had other responsibilities. 

“Well, I think he would be much better suited to understanding this and giving us an actual answer. I know next to nothing about parallel universes or teleportation dysfunctions, that’s not my job. If the girl was speaking tongues, maybe I could help. Sulu is more than capable of handling the bridge until the captain returns.” There was no changing her mind, Bones could tell. It’s one of the skills he’d picked up over the years.

“You better go get him, then.”

The PADD tucked under her arm, Uhura stalked back towards the bridge. Her ponytail swayed as she walked.

Bones wound up back next to Chapel, listening to her playful banter with Jane. It was nice, almost familiar. It wasn’t even flirting anymore, it was just banter for the sake of banter. 

There were a few minutes where Bones just sat back, only adding to the conversation when one of the girls tried to pull him in, and only to restate how much he did not want any part of whatever they were discussing. Then he started tossing ideas around in his head about how to break the news to the kid. It would be perfectly understandable if she didn’t take it well, but he wanted to minimize that. Jim could be pretty unpredictable with bad news. It really just depended on the day and how he was feeling at the time. Given what he did know about Jim, however, Bones could make some educated guesses on the best ways to let her know. 

She’d have to be comfortable, have to feel safe. If she was around people she didn’t know or didn’t like, that would make it harder. They couldn’t just drop it on her, she had to sort through some of it on her own or she would take it way worse. Jim always needed difficult news in pieces so he had time to work through it on his own and digest the information. 

This was all assuming her brain worked like Jim’s did. Which wasn’t a given, but seeing how Jane interacted with Bones and Chapel, the look in her eyes as she took in the starship, even the way she walked, it was hard for Bones to imagine that she would be unlike Jim in such an important way. 

He was feeling pretty good about his odds with telling her, a plan starting to come together. Just him and Chapel in the room, telling her slowly and assuring her that they were doing everything they could to figure the situation out. 

Maybe after he was done talking with Spock he would even have more details to provide her with. That would make her feel better, too. 

All in all, he was fairly confident. 

“Doctor, this data makes no sense.”

The doors had barely opened when Spock charged through, PADD tucked under his arm. His brow was furrowed slightly, his lips barely pursed. He was confused, and more than a little bit upset about it. Uhura hadn’t followed him. Bones stood up and mentally braced himself. 

He heard Jane quietly ask Chapel who the pointy-eared guy was, and the beginnings of Chapel’s equally soft response. 

“Spock, I know-”

But the Vulcan didn’t even acknowledge that Bones spoke. “I assumed it was a programming malfunction, but I looked it over myself and it seems that whomever you have found truly is-”

“Spock, I don’t think you should-” Bones said, at the same time Chapel started to say the same thing.

“A genetic match for the captain.” 

Silence coated the whole room, thick and heavy. Bones sank back into his chair and Chapel’s face fell into her hand. 

It was, of course, Jane who broke the silence. “A genetic match?” 

Her voice was softer than it had been, and she looked much smaller than she had before Spock had arrived. 

“Commander Spock,” Bones said briskly. “I was hoping you would speak to me privately about your theories on the matter instead of causing undue stress to our guest.”

Spock’s spine somehow straightened even more. “You had not told her.”

“No, Spock,” Bones ground out. “I hadn’t.” 

“Told me what?” Jane moved to the back of the bed, her back against the wall. She surveyed the room, her eyes locking on each one of them in turn. “A genetic match for who?”

Bones looked at Jane, at her eyes that were so familiar to him, and sighed yet again. “You are on the Starship Enterprise, the year is 2261, and we are hundreds of light years away from Earth.” 

Jane slowly brought her knees into her chest, her hands resting on the tops of her feet. “A genetic match. For. Who?” 

“The captain of this ship,” Bones said slowly. “Is a man from Riverside, Iowa, born to George and Winona, named James Tiberius Kirk.”

“You’re messing with me.” Jane didn’t even miss a beat. “This isn’t funny. You’re not being funny.”

When no one said anything, Jane panicked and looked to Chapel. “He’s just….he’s just messing with me right? He’s not, you’re not…”

Jane trailed off, desperately searching Chapel’s face for something she didn’t find. After a tense moment, she turned back to Bones. “I don’t believe you.”

Spock stepped forward. “If I may, Doctor McCoy is very qualified to make such a call, as am I, and we both came to the conclusion that-”

“Bullshit.”

Jane looked Spock directly in the eyes. “Bullshit,” she repeated, as though he didn’t hear her the first time. 

“Jane,” Chapel said softly, placing her hand on Jane’s knee. “As crazy as it is, they’re telling the truth.”

Jane’s face contorted into a few unidentifiable expressions before going blank. Her eyes closed and she leaned her head to rest against the wall. “Explain.”

“It seems,” Spock began. “That you may not be from this universe at all, but one very closely aligned with ours.”

“How did I get here.” It wasn’t a question, not really. Her inflection was flat, listless. It was a resignation. 

“That we do not know.” 

Jane released a slow, calculated breath through her nose. Her eyes were still closed.

The doors opened again, and loud, scottish yelling followed.

“So I was just walkin the halls and one of my ensigns is knocked out in the transport room! How did this happen? Why has he not been helped?” Scotty yelled, his voice practically echoing in the room. 

Everyone just stared at the angry Scot, and he stared back. “What?”

His eyes landed on Jane, who had drawn her knees in even tighter, her wide eyes on Scotty. “Who’s this?”

“I could ask the same question,” Jane said, clearly aiming for confident and landing on shaky. 

“Chapel,” Bones said. “Page McCormick, tell him to check on Ensign…”

“Ross,” Scotty supplied.

“Ross. In the transport room,” Bones finished. Chapel pulled her hand away from Jane’s knee to retrieve a PADD. Jane’s hand followed Chapel’s without a thought, though she stopped and placed it back on her foot after she realized what she was doing. 

“So,” Scotty said, stretching his words. “You are?”

Jane looked up. There was a tense moment of eye contact, and then she relaxed. 

“My name is Jane Kirk. I’m not sure how I got here. Sorry about your ensign, by the way.” Jane seemed almost comfortable again. 

“A Kirk, huh? We’ve got one of those on our crew, too.” Scotty said, conversationally, with no idea of the situation at hand. His face turned incredulous. “Wait that was you?”

Jane nodded, only a little bit sheepish. Scotty smiled. “Well, must’ve been a good shot. Get his phaser off him too?” 

Bones picked the aforementioned weapon off the table. Scotty’s smile widened. “Probably did the kid some good, his head’s never sat rightly on his shoulders.”

“Glad I could help,” Jane smiled, turning to let her legs hang off the bed so she could fully face the chief of engineering. Chapel hid her grateful smiled behind the PADD. Bones didn’t even bother. 

Spock was still confused. “Doctor, we should get a team together to better understand this situation, whatever happened needs to be rectified.”

“Spock, we don’t have any idea what happened.”

“Which is precisely why we need to start searching as soon as possible. Evidence could be fading by the second.”

“Evidence of what?” A new voice rang out into the already crowded room. Everyone turned to see exactly what they didn’t want at that moment. 

James Kirk stood in the doorway, wide stance already set, cocky smirk on his lips, and his arm outstretched. His presence filled the space. Usually when he was happy like that, he was like sunshine, their captain, warmth and light following him into every room. The crew gravitated towards him because of it, allowing him into their lives and creating the large family that was the Enterprise. Kirk’s aura and charm had gotten them all this far into their journey. 

“What was that you said before I left about how I would get hurt, Bonesy?”

Now, though, it wasn’t entirely welcome. He did a slow turn, rotating on the balls of his feet. “Not a scratch.” 

His smile slowly started to fade as he locked eyes with each of the silent staff. Spock stood in front of the bed, with Bones next to him. Chapel was seated on one side of the bed, and Scotty stood on the other, effectively blocking his view of the patient. 

“What’s this?” He asked, walking to stand by Scotty, so he could look at the bed’s occupant. 

“Hello,” Jim said, confusion almost but not quite obscuring his good mood. The girl’s eyes were firmly locked onto the floor, and it seemed to take all of her strength to lift them to Jim’s face. 

Their eyes locked and everyone held their breath.

Identical blue eyes, both too bright, too intense, both filled with something only really understood by the two of them. Jim’s brow furrowed, and Jane smiled a too-tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes. 

“Boy,” Jane said, nearly deadpan. “My hair gets way darker with age.” 

Spock wordlessly held the PADD with the DNA analysis in front of Jim, who took it with a motion that was just a little bit too aggressive.

He barely looked at the results before his eyes were back on Jane, fixed pointedly on her chin. Bones looked too, noticing a small scar there on the point, barely noticeable. He’d always assumed Jim had just cut himself shaving or something of the like. 

Jim rubbed his own chin and looked to Spock for more information. 

Spock opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. It looked like he was actually trying to find a delicate way to word what he wanted to say. 

It was Bones that started talking. “This is Jane.”

Jane waved. She started swinging her legs again. 

Bones continued on. “And last she knew, she was in Riverside before she was beamed into our transporter room.” 

“And she’s….” Jim turned the PADD to show Bones the data as though he’d never seen it. “Me?”

“So it would seem,” Spock said, finally finding his voice.

Jim looked at the PADD again, scrolling through all the information over and over again until it seemed like he would never look up. “This doesn’t make any sense.” 

“It would seem, Captain,” Spock said calmly. “That we may be in a similar situation now as we were when we met my counterpart.” 

“Parallel universe.” Jim ground out. Jane’s head dipped, and her legs swung back onto the bed and into her chest. 

Spock nodded. 

“Well,” Scotty said after a short pause. “What do we do with the lass?” 

The room exploded into sound. 

Jim was insisting that she couldn’t stay on board for the next few years until they got back to Earth, and Spock was supporting that decision. 

Chapel was chastising them for being so cold, and Scotty was shouting that the girl wasn’t a dog. 

Bones was yelling at all of them to just shut up. 

Sound swirled around the room, fragments of sentences lost in each other. The noise swelled and crashed, pulling them all further and further into the argument.

“It isn’t safe for her!”

“Like that’s your concern right now, James!”

“It will be years until we return to Earth-”

“She’s a human bloody being, you can’t just kick her out to the street!”

“If everyone could just shut up for one second-”

“You have no right-”

“You have no right-”

“Nurse, if I may-”

“For Christ’s sake-”

“If we could all just,” Bones shouted, his eyes flickering over to Jane without even thinking, his voice immediately trailing off. “Calm….down.”

Jane had tucked her head between her knees, breathing shakily. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, squeezing tighter than could have been comfortable. Her hair obscured her face.

“You ok, kid?” Bones asked softly, the other four still arguing around Jane. She didn’t respond. 

Bones moved around the bed, pushing past Jim and Scotty to kneel in front of Jane. “Kid, you still here?”

Jane’s shoulders tensed.

“Hey now,” Bones said carefully. He pointedly kept his hands by his sides, as much as he wanted to reach out to her. “You’re ok, you’re ok. Everything’s gonna be just fine.”

Slowly, the other four looked over and stopped yelling. They all just watched. Shame colored Scotty and Chapel’s faces. Spock held the same expression he always did, and Jim went blank. 

Bones ignored them. Jane had started shaking. “Come on, darlin, stay with me here. You’re ok. You’re safe, nothing’s gonna happen. Stay with me.” 

One of her arms unwound from her knees and she reached a hand out for Bones. He grabbed it, squeezed gently, and kept talking. 

“There you go. You’re ok, we’re all ok. Come on, darling, can you look at me?” 

Slowly, so slowly, Jane raised her head to look at Bones through bloodshot eyes. He smiled, and Jane smiled back weakly in return. “There we go,” Bones praised. Her smile widened. 

“Sorry,” Jane croaked. “I just...I don’t…bad memories.” 

Bones carefully rubbed his thumb along her knuckles. “It’s ok, Jane, we shouldn’t have-”

“How old is she?” Jim asked. Bones opened his mouth to answer, and to scold the captain, but he was interrupted.

Jane was on her feet in an instant, one step taken towards Jim. 

“I’m right here!” Jane yelled. Any gratefulness or fear in her eyes was replaced by fire. “You could just ask me! I’m 17! Thanks for asking!”

Jim’s eyes bored into Jane’s for a long moment. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out. Spock nodded once at Jane and once at the doctor before following him.

Scotty shook his head. “I hope he’s not goin back to the bridge, not like that. Poor Chekov couldn’t take it.” 

Chapel stood up. “Why don’t you go check, I’ll make sure he isn’t breaking anything in the labs. If we’re lucky, he just stormed off to his quarters.”

It sounded like this had happened before, and that Jim didn’t control his temper well, something the girl on the bed understood well. Jane knew nothing quite like this had probably hit her masculine counterpart, and she hoped he wasn’t taking it out on someone. Things were ok to break, in Jane’s experience. People were not. 

Chapel and Scotty briskly walked out of the room, and a frazzled male nurse walked in with another man in a red shirt that Jane recognized in his arms. She distantly thought to tell Bones to give the ensign his phaser back.

Bones went to assist his nurse for a few minutes before he fell back into the chair by Jane’s bed. He stared at her, an unreadable expression on his face.

Jane sighed. “I’m every memory he’s ever repressed, aren’t I?”

“You know, kid,” Bones said. “I think you might be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This was all kind of dialogue heavy, I know, but it looks like it'll start to pick up a little more next time. 
> 
> Let me know what you thought, I'll get the next chapter up as soon as I can, it looks like there will be 5 more before we're done with Jane here.


End file.
